


Sing Thee To Thy Rest

by methylviolet10b



Series: Now cracks a noble heart [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt, because you can't fix this but you might fix somewhen else, not a fix-it but it fixes something for me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:53:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22723507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: It should have been him. It always should have been him. A missing scene from Steve's preparation to return the you-know-whats.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Series: Now cracks a noble heart [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634023
Comments: 11
Kudos: 16





	Sing Thee To Thy Rest

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Yeah, so this isn't my usual playground by a long shot, but I've been watching this story evolve since the original Iron Man, and the Captain America movies, and there were some things at the end of Avengers: Endgame that really bothered me. I jotted this and its companion piece down and it's been sitting there ever since, so I figured I'd go ahead and post. Not mine, yadda yadda, and I haven't seen all the movies or related tie-in media/TV shows, so may not be entirely canon-compliant. Seriously, your mileage may vary here.

It should have been him.

It _always_ should have been him.

In the lab, instead of Doctor Erskine. On the train, instead of Bucky. In Wakanda, instead of Bucky and Sam and so many others, so many. On Vormir, instead of Tasha. Amid the ruins of what had been Avengers headquarters, instead of Tony.

He’s the one who should have died. Who _had_ died, as he’d meant to, crashing the plane into the Atlantic, saving New York, atoning for his failure.

And yet he survived, waking up into a future that was all wrong. Peggy an old woman, dying. Bucky turned into a killer, transformed by decades of horror and torture into a shell of the man Steve loved more than he’d ever known how to say. Howard, dead before his time, but not before being warped by this world into someone Steve never would have recognized. Hydra not defeated but thriving in the heart of the organization that was supposed to defend the world. 

All wrong. All because the wrong people died, and he had lived.

He was so tired of death. He was so damned tired of being the one to survive.

This future, this time, wasn’t all horrible. There were still decent people in the world. People like Sam, Clint, Sharon, Wanda, and Tasha; shining like jewels, rising above everything that had ever been done to them. Medicine could work wonders, saving children with asthma, wiping out polio and tuberculosis and taming influenza enough that most people treated it like an inconvenience instead of a killer. Compared to 1945, Sam and Sharon were treated far better than Jim Morita and Gabe Jones and Peggy Carter had been. The ideal of equality was acknowledged, even if, like Hydra, hatred and racism and sexism still lurked, waiting the chance to rise.

But things should be so much better than that.

How much better would the world have been, had Hydra been rooted out properly? If evil had not been allowed to survive, and if good men he’d read about in history books, like Martin Luther King and President Kennedy, had been allowed to live?

If Tony Stark had grown up with a father who was a good man, the man Howard had been and should have remained?

If Peggy hadn’t been left on her own to fight enemies within as well as without?

If Tasha had never been taken to the Red Room, never had to survive a childhood that didn’t deserve the name?

If Bucky, his Bucky, hadn’t been left to suffer and be warped almost out of recognition?

It wasn’t possible to know. Except it was.

He’d listened to all the warnings, all the reasons why they couldn’t actually change the past, why the stones all had to be returned to exactly the same times and places they had been.

He’d volunteered for the mission. He’d do it, do exactly what they asked of him.

(Well, almost. He was going to leave the spirit stone embedded in the wreckage of the Red Skull’s skull on Vormir. That one would have to be close enough.)

He was _not_ going to come back to this time.

He understood that there was nothing he could do to make _this_ time, _this_ place right. Tony and Tasha and Peggy would remain dead; there was _nothing_ he could do to bring them back. Morgan would grow up without her father, Clint’s children without their Aunt Nat. Bucky, the Winter Soldier, might continue to heal, but would never recover, not fully.

But an alternate timeline, where none of this had to happen? Where he could stop everything that had gone so wrong?

That was worth risking every danger they’d warned about in creating an alternate timeline.

That was worth risking never making it back himself.

That was worth risking _everything_.

“April 23, 1947. 57.9343° N, 30.3351° E.”

Steve paused in the middle of adjusting the sleeve on the special suit required for travelling in the quantum realm and turned to face the speaker. He knew who it was the instant he’d spoken, though he hadn’t sensed him approach. “What?”

“Moron.” Bucky said it without heat, without the banter he would have once used, but the eyes that met his were full of understanding and just a hint of irritation. “You were going to make the last jump without researching your target, weren’t you.”

No point in asking how Bucky had found out about the quantum realm, time travel, or his mission; the Winter Soldier had ways of finding out these things. There was also no point denying what he was planning to do. He hadn’t told Bucky, but he wasn’t remotely surprised he’d figured it out. Even changed as they both were, Bucky still knew him. “Didn’t have to,” he said, jaw clenched. “I know exactly where that train was, and when you fell.”

“Can’t go there, Steve. Too many people, too little space, too much chance of making everything worse. Too many things could change. You could alter the outcome of the entire war. We didn’t go through everything we did to lose to those Nazis or the Red Skull.”

“So I’m supposed to let you fall? Let you suffer for more than _two years_?” Steve couldn’t believe his ears.

“No. You’re going to go to the coordinates I gave you on April 23, 1947.” Bucky shrugged his shoulders a little unevenly. It was always uneven now, the weight of his artificial arm changed everything about how he moved. “I did a lot of reading while I was recovering in Wakanda. Including my own files, and everything the Wakandans could dig up for me. They’re good people,” he added with a faint smile. “Turns out that April 23, 1947 is the day I woke up, finally healed enough from the fall. Yeah, with the missing arm, but still every bit Bucky Barnes. Up until then, they were just monitoring me, studying me, trying to understand how I could still be alive and healing, what made me tick. I don’t think they ever truly expected me to regain consciousness. Turning me into the Winter Soldier…that didn’t start until after I woke up. So don’t be late, asshole.”

Steve stared, so many thoughts and emotions whirling through his mind that he was almost at a loss for words. Almost, because there was one word he always had. “Bucky…”

“You’ll have your years with Peg, Steve. You’ll have your years with Bucky, too. The serum Erskine gave you, Zola gave me…you’ll have time for everything.” Bucky’s eyes remained locked with Steve’s, calm, yet full of everything: everything he had been, everything he was now, and everything he wasn’t and never could be. “You go get to Bucky in time, and you go get to Peg in time, and you go get Howard to make you a new shield and Bucky a new arm, and root out the remnants of Hydra, all that. Go on and do what needs to be done and live that life. And when your clock, that clock does finally wind down, you come back here and tell me all about it.” The smile he gave Steve was one he hadn’t seen from Bucky since he’d still been sick, puny Steve Rogers, 4-F: a little wry, a little exasperated, and immensely fond. A smile that held all the ghosts of this time, this place. All they’d been to each other, and all they weren’t; all the might-have-beens and never-could-bes, but absolutely no doubts. Not about this.

Bucky always did know him better than anyone else. Right down to the ground. Right into the very depth of his soul, the beat of his heart.

He gave Bucky the only answer he could: a parade-ground salute and a grin that hid absolutely nothing, including the tears. “You’d better be here when I return.”

“Oh, I will. I’ll still be here, helping write the rest of _this_ story. This world won’t stop, regardless of what you do in that 1947 and beyond.” Bucky returned the salute, eyes bright. “You go write a better one.”

Steve had once promised Peg a dance. Now he was promising Bucky a story.

No matter what, he was going to keep all his promises. And then, finally, he could rest.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted February 14, 2020.


End file.
